Kentucky's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a 2022 law establishing public funding for charter schools violates the state constitution, unanimously affirming that education dollars belong to the common school system and nowhere else.
Justice Michelle M. Keller wrote the opinion, which upheld a lower court's decision striking down the measure the year after it was enacted. The ruling lands the latest blow to school choice efforts in a state where charter schools have been technically legal since 2017, yet not a single one has opened because no funding mechanism survived legal challenge.
Read that again: nine years of legal authorization, zero schools built. That's what happens when constitutional language becomes a fortress for the status quo.
Keller's opinion rested on a straightforward reading of Kentucky's constitution, which has treated education as a mandate for more than a century. According to AP News, the court concluded that the state's founding document simply does not permit redirecting public education funds outside the traditional public school system.
"The mandate implicates state education funds are for common schools and for nothing else."
The court was careful to stay in its lane on policy, at least rhetorically. Keller noted that the justices make "no predictions about the potential success of charter schools or their ability to improve the education of the Commonwealth's children," deferring those evaluations to the legislature. But in practice, the ruling slams the door on the legislature's most significant attempt to fund charter schools in the state's history.
The Republican-dominated legislature passed the measure in 2022, overriding a veto from Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear. The override demonstrated real political will. The court extinguished it.
Kentucky's situation reveals a structural trap that school choice supporters face in states with rigid constitutional education provisions. The legislature legalized charter schools. The legislature funded charter schools. The governor's veto was overridden. And none of it mattered, because the state constitution, as interpreted by the judiciary, treats the common school system as the only permissible recipient of education dollars.
This isn't a case where lawmakers were asleep at the wheel. They acted. Voters, however, sent a mixed signal: in 2024, a ballot measure that would have allowed state lawmakers to allocate public tax dollars to support students attending private or charter schools was rejected at the polls.
That rejection deserves an honest reckoning from the school choice movement. Constitutional amendments require public persuasion, and the public wasn't persuaded. The court's ruling makes the amendment route the only viable path forward, and Kentucky voters already said no once.
The families stuck in underperforming schools don't get to write concurring opinions. They don't get to override vetoes. They get told, year after year, that the system they're locked into is the only one the constitution allows, and that any alternative must wait for a supermajority of voters to rewrite the state's foundational document.
Charter school supporters argue these schools offer another choice for families. Opponents counter that charters would divert needed funds from existing public schools. That second argument carries a quiet confession: the current system is so fragile that competition alone might break it. If common schools are as strong as their defenders claim, a handful of charters shouldn't threaten them.
But that argument didn't matter Thursday. The constitution, not policy logic, decided this one.
The legislative path is closed. The court was unanimous, leaving no ambiguity and no crack to exploit with a narrower bill. The constitutional amendment path was rejected by voters in 2024. That leaves charter school advocates with one option: try again at the ballot box with a better campaign and a more compelling case.
Meanwhile, Kentucky remains a state where charter schools are legal in name only. Authorized since 2017, funded by no one, opened nowhere. It is a permission slip with no school to attend.
The court read the constitution and ruled accordingly. Fair enough. But constitutions are not scripture. They are documents written by citizens and amendable by citizens. If Kentucky's parents want school choice, they'll have to win it not in the legislature, not in the courts, but at the ballot box. The establishment made sure of that.